The General Debate of the 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly is happening in New York through September 30. The General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations, comprising all 193 Members of the United Nations. On this week's Please Explain we start off with Warren Hoge, Senior Advisor for External Relations for the International Peace Institute in New York and former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, covering the UN. Then we're joined by Vera Jelinek, Divisional Dean and Director of the Center for Global Affairs at New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Stanley Meisler, author of  The United Nations: The First Fifty Years, and  United Nations: A History, will tell us how the General Assembly works and what comes out of the sessions.

Common sense seems simple enough, but it can be more complicated and less helpful that you would expect. Duncan J. Watts, sociologist and Yahoo! Principal Researcher, explains the benefits and limitations of common sense and looks closely at how common-sense reasoning can be misleading. His book Everything You Know Is Obvious once You Know the Answer draws on the latest scientific research and real-life examples to show how common sense attempts to predict, manage, and manipulate social and economic systems often fail, and looks at the implications in politics, business and everyday life.

If you have a question about common sense, or some examples of when it works and when it fails, call us at 646-829-3985, or leave a comment.

For many of us, dogs are loyal friends and companions, but we know very little about how they see the world. On this week's Please Explain, we look at what we know about how dogs perceive the world and how dogs can be trained to help in search and rescue efforts.We’re joined by John Bradshaw, the Director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol and the author of Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet and Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Barnard College and Director of the Dog Cognition Lab and the author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.

You may have spent time at the beach this summer, watching the waves and swimming in the surf, but on this week’s Please Explain, we're going below the surface to look at some of the creatures that live on the ocean floor—cuttlefish, squid, and octopus. Roger Hanlon senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Ellen Prager, formerly the chief scientist at Aquarius Reef Base in Florida and author of Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime join us to talk about these creatures and their amazing abilities to camouflage themselves.

Watch this amazing video of an octopus shot by Roger Hanlon:

More and more gluten-free products have been appearing on grocery store shelves in recent years, and for this week's Please Explain segment, we'll find out what gluten is and find out the causes, symptoms, and treatment for celiac disease and other gluten sensitivities. Dean Lavornia is Chair of the Baking & Pastry Department at the Johnson & Wales University College of Culinary Arts in Providence, Rhode Island. He's created a number of gluten-free recipes for those in his family with celiac disease. We'll also speak with Nutritionist Bernadette Latson, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center.

Thunderstorms are one of the most dramatic features of summer, so this week’s Please Explain is all about thunder and lightning storms. Walt Zaleski, Warning Coordination Meteorologist Program Manager, National Weather Service, Southern Region Headquarters, tells us what causes these storms, how they’re tracked and studied, and how the weather works.

This week’s Please Explain is all about roller coasters—from the old classics like the Cyclone to the new wild rides like the Green Lantern! We're joined by two roller coaster experts: Jeffrey Rhoads, Associate Professor at Purdue University's School of Mechanical Engineering,  where he co-teaches a course in the physics of roller coasters, and Jacob Miller, PhD candidate at Purdue University's School of Mechanical Engineering (studying vibration), whose personal passion is the Millennium Force at Cedar Point in Ohio for its combination of "speed" and  "airtime."

Jason Munshi-South, assistant professor at Baruch College, and Rob Dunn, associate professor of biology at North Carolina State University and author of The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today, discuss how cities and urban environments change the animals, insects—and even bacteria—that live within them. They’ll also cover how natural selection and evolution work and how they study it.

Weeds pop up in lawns and gardens and even in cracks in sidewalks. Lars Anderson,  plant physiologist with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service on the campus of UC Davis; and Kristin Schleiter, Curator of Outdoor Gardens and Herbaceous Collections at the New York Botanical Garden, look at the wide variety of weeds, why they seem to thrive everywhere, and ways to eliminate—or accept—them. 

This summer wildfires have raged in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as throughout the country, and so far over 5,800,000 acres have burned this year alone. Ken Frederick and Tom Romanello, Bureau of Land Management fire specialists at the National Interagency Fire Center, explain how wild fires start and spread, how they behave, and how they’re contained and extinguished. We’ll also find out why there seem to be so many this year, and what happens to an area after a fire.

Call us at 646-829-3985 to ask a question about fires, or leave a comment!